23 September 2002 Morning Edition

Kosovo Stories

· Less voters than five years ago - Kosovo excluded (DPA)
· Serb refugee's stage roadblock to demand entry to Kosovo (AFP)
· Kosovo losing 'beauty test' (Scotsman)
· Kosovo offers Bush a model (Boston Globe)
· Kosovo Albanian attitudes change (The Washington Times)
· Irish woman's grief for deported Kosovar fiancé (Guardian)

Regional News

Macedonia

· Explosion destroys car of Macedonian PM's bodyguard (AFP)
· Government bodyguard's car destroyed in the blast (DPA)
· Explosion destroys jeep of prime minister's chief bodyguard (AP)
· Social Democrats lose one seat in Macedonia count (DPA)
· A hopeful outcome (The Economist) Only Hardcopy

Serbia / Montenegro

· No big change expected after Serbian presidential polls (DPA)
· Three parties switch sides in Serbian Presidential race (AP)
· Italy's Giorgo Armani store opens in Belgrade (Reuters)

Albania

· Albanians troops in action to rescue flood victims (AFP)
· Albania declares disaster as floods swamp towns (Reuters)
· Heavy rains cause flooding in northwestern Albania (AP)

World News

· Chancellor faces major battle to satisfy allies at home and abroad (Guardian)
· Schroeder declares victory (CNN)
· Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder - Germany's comeback kid (DPA)
· Fischer cult could keep Schroeder chancellor (Reuters)
· Gerhard Schroeder, a study in contradictions (AFP)
· Schroeder: Political gambler who led Germany into 21st century (AP)

NATO

· NATO role in terror war (NY Times)
· Seven new countries to be invited to NATO (AFP)

Special Reports - Commentaries

· Congress Wants to Know Cost of War (Washington Post)
· Playing Into Evil's Hands (Washington Times)

Less voters than five years ago - Kosovo excluded

Belgrade (dpa) - Fewer voters will go to the polls in Serbia's presidential election next Sunday than in previous years because many ethnic Albanians in Kosovo are refusing to vote.

In the election 6.55 million people are eligible to vote, compared to five years ago when 7.2 million voters were registered.

A total of 8,634 polling stations will be open throughout the country, including 288 in Kosovo, Marko Blagojevic of the Centre for Free and Democratic Elections (CESID) told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa on Sunday.

Kosovo, Serbia's volatile southern province, has been under United Nations administration since 1999, and is dominated by ethnic Albanians who want independence and refuse to recognize any authority from Belgrade.

The Albanians were previously included in Serbian electoral registries, but routinely boycotted all official elections. This time, only voters living in areas of Kosovo that are deemed safe would be allowed to vote. These areas are likely to be mostly populated by Serbs.

``An estimated 70,000 ethnic Albanians would technically be able to vote at the 288 polling stations in Kosovo,'' Blagojevic said.

It is believed that former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic used the fact that many Kosovan Albanians boycotted the polls to manipulate results in previous elections, even after the U.N. assumed control over the province.

Blagojevic said he did not expect any manipulation this time, despite some weaknesses in the registries.

``Nobody is silly enough to try this. We will cover all polling stations and, in cooperation with the Serbian statistics bureau will release our estimates two hours after the voting ends,'' he said.

Serb refugees stage roadblock to demand entry to Kosovo

MERDARE, Yugoslavia, Sept 21 (AFP) - Serb refugees from Kosovo blocked the main road from central Serbia into Kosovo for seven hours on Saturday demanding that they be allowed into the UN-administered province.

The group of about 100 refugees stopped traffic by parking vehicles across the main road in the village of Merdare on the administrative border with the Kosovo.
Serb officials who reported no incidents, said they stopped the protest when UN police in Kosovo (UNMIK) and soldiers from NATO's KFOR multinational peacekeeping force immediately deployed to the area and told them their security could not be guaranteed if they returned.

Earlier, a member of the Serb non-governmental organisation Comittee for the Return to Kosovo (CRK) said the protesters were trying to get a UN resolution enforced.

"We do not want any incidents, all we want is the respect of UN resolution 1244 on Kosovo which allows for the return of displaced persons to their homes," Dusica Mirkovic told AFP.

"We are asking for negotiations with UN officials in Kosovo about the return of refugees."

Serb Deputy-Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic and the CRK leadership on Friday called off a large-scale plan to send Serb refugees home to Kosovo, because of fears returning Serbs would not be safe.

Serb authorities obtained information suggesting that Albanian terrorists were planning attacks on returning refugees, CRK head Miroslav Solevic told reporters on Saturday.
It is estimated that more than 200,000 Serbs have fled their homes in Kosovo since June 1999, when Yugoslav army forces withdrew from the province after 78 days of NATO bombing.

Only about 100 refugees have since returned to Kosovo. The UN administration and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) justify the small number by "lack of security for the Serb population," considering that a threat of violence by ethnic Albanian extremists still exists.

More than 80,000 Serbs still live in Kosovo, mainly in enclaves protected by NATO-led peacekeeping forces, with restricted freedom of movement.

Kosovo losing 'beauty test'

CHRISTIAN JENNINGS IN PRISTINA Scotsman

MICHAEL Steiner, the no-nonsense German bureaucrat who is the UN's de facto proconsul in Kosovo, is fond of describing the jostling for international attention as being akin to a beauty contest.

Kosovo, he says, is fast discovering she is not the only beautiful woman on the catwalk: Afghanistan and Iraq are parading too and at the moment they seem more appealing.

As a consequence, international donors are slashing budgets for the tiny Yugoslav province, and key nations such as Britain are pulling out their troops as quickly as possible.

Britain has started to withdraw many of its 2,200 troops from Kosovo as security improves and the international community focuses on pressing commitments elsewhere.

Demonstrating the extent to which urgent humanitarian funding is needed elsewhere in the world, the European Union's external commissioner, Chris Patten, announced last week on a visit to the provincial capital Pristina that the EU's aid budget to Kosovo would be slashed dramatically.

This year the EU gave £90m (140m) to Kosovo: next year it will be only £30m (50m), the year after £25m.

"Kosovo has been a terrific success story, but the story isn't over," insisted Patten. "It would be a real mistake for anybody to think we could now relax and simply turn our attention to some parts of the world where the story is not as good as it is here."

He did not explain how that renewed commitment could be squared with slashing EU financial support.

British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon said when he visited Kosovo last week that increased security and stability meant Britain would begin reducing troop strengths as part of a "progressive reduction".

"We anticipate a significant drawdown by 2004," said Hoon. "There will be some changes this year, some next spring and early next year."

Hoon would not comment on numbers, but defence officials and international insiders both in Kosovo and in the UK said last night Britain's presence in Kosovo could be reduced by up to 1,000 men as early as November.

By next spring command of Multi-National Brigade Centre, under British control since Nato entered Kosovo in 1999, would be passed to a Finnish general.

In a year's time, say officials, there could be as few as 300-400 British troops in Kosovo, mainly working in areas such as intelligence gathering and administrative tasks at the headquarters of Nato's Kosovo Force, or K-For.

Troops rotated out of Kosovo would not necessarily be earmarked for possible deployment to Iraq, said Hoon, stressing "these decisions were taken independently of anywhere else in the world".

Defence officials in Kosovo and the UK say, however, that troop reductions in Kosovo were linked to strategic thinking about a possible deployment of the British army in Iraq.

There are 2,200 British troops serving as the UK commitment to K-For, the 38,000-strong Nato force that entered Kosovo in June 1999 after a 78-day bombing campaign forced the departure of an oppressive and ethnocidal Serb regime.

The British provide the lead elements in the central area of the province, operating in a brigade led by Brigadier Simon Mayall from the Queen's Dragoon Guards, which includes Swedes, Finns, Norwegians and Czechs.

International officials from the UN and Nato were quick to condemn the British withdrawals, saying they were premature, potentially damaging to security and operationally shortsighted.

"The British army in Kosovo essentially provides the operational and political example by which most of the other Nato nationalities act," said one senior international official in Pristina.

"If they start leaving, having only half-completed the jobs Mr Blair promised in 1999 that they would do, then the message given to Kosovar Albanians who trust the British is that they are being deserted just when Kosovo needs a firmer hand than ever to keep it stable. This is an appallingly short-sighted decision by the British government, both politically and militarily."

Another official said that if Britain started reducing its troop strengths to such a large extent, it risked losing vital influence in Kosovo with the other four lead nations: America, France, Italy and Germany.

With key negotiations about the long-awaited final status of independence-hungry Kosovo to start next year, Britain could play a key moderating presence.

Patten said he was "impressed by progress made" in Kosovo, yet critics are quick to point out that despite international investments of over quarter of a billion euros spent over three years on Kosovo's neglected power plants, there is still no reliable and constant supply of water and electricity.

Observers fear that unless the international community continues its commitment to the province, its efforts to bring stability to the region may begin to unravel, leading to further tension and violence.

Kosovo offers Bush a model

By Elizabeth Neuffer, 9/21/2002 - Boston Globe

UNITED NATIONS - Over the years, the United States has succeeded - and failed - in attempts to persuade the United Nations to authorize the use of force against rogue regimes.

On Thursday, President Bush warned that the United States would act against Iraq even without the UN's approval.

For UN diplomats to authorize the use of force, they must agree that the actions of a nation or its leader constitute a threat to peace and security in the region.

In some instances, the Security Council has chosen to act swiftly. After North Korea attacked the Republic of Korea in 1950, the council immediately recommended the use of force. Sixteen UN member states volunteered troops to serve under US command, and troops remain in South Korea.

But after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, President George H.W. Bush faced an uphill battle to persuade the 15-member council to authorize the use of force against Iraq.

''It took three months to get everybody on board,'' said Jeffrey Laurenti, executive director for policy studies at the United Nations Association of the United States, the largest grass-roots foreign policy group in the United States.

In 1998, President Clinton failed to persuade the council to approve military action against Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic to halt ''ethnic cleansing'' in Kosovo. Russia, Serbia's traditional ally, threatened to veto the measure. The United States turned to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, arguing that the force was needed to ensure stability in Europe. NATO carried out an 11-week bombing campaign.

Analysts say Kosovo may serve as President George W. Bush's guide if the Security Council fails to act. Like Clinton, Bush will have taken his concerns to the UN diplomatic body, a gesture intended to reassure allies that his administration is not unilateralist.

If the council does not authorize the use of force in Iraq, Bush can still rely on the fact that members are united in their belief that Iraq is in violation of UN resolutions. That gives him some moral cover, analysts say.

''In Kosovo, we didn't have any authority to use force,'' said Richard Holbrooke, who served as US ambassador to the UN under Clinton. ''He doesn't need a Security Council resolution.''
One key difference, however, is that every member of the Security Council but Russia supported military action against Milosevic. So far, only Britain and the United States among Security Council members have said they support the use of force.

Council members are balking at the idea of a new UN resolution, much less one that leaves the door open for military action. Russia, Syria, and Mauritius have said they will not support a new UN measure, and France is said to be wavering.

Kosovo Albanian attitudes change

Joshua Kucera - THE WASHINGTON TIMES - Published 9/21/2002

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia - The cheers that greeted the arrival of NATO forces and U.N. administrators in Kosovo three years ago have turned to anger and occasionally violent protests since the arrest of several leaders of the former Kosovo Liberation Army.
"I never thought that we'd come to the stage of protesting against them," said Sadik Halitjaha, a former KLA commander who organized several protests against the U.N. forces recently. "We never thought we would say goodbye by throwing stones at them and we hope we don't have to."

NATO forces brought an end to Serbian rule over Kosovo, the Albanian-majority province of Serbia where the KLA was fighting for independence.

"We greeted them with flowers and we hoped we would send them off in the same way," said Mr. Halitjaha, who is now the president of the Association of War Veterans of the KLA.

All that changed when the U.N. forces started arresting KLA war heroes and began a rapprochement with the Serbian authorities.

Last month, Rrustem Mustafa, a former top KLA commander, was arrested on charges of murder, torture and illegal detention of Serbian captives. The next day, U.N. officials announced the indictment of another top commander, Ramush Haradinaj, for his role in a shootout with a rival Albanian family after the war.

Six others, including Mr. Haradinaj's brother, Daut, were arrested in June on the same charges, and three other former KLA members were arrested in January.
Kosovo's prime minister, Bajram Rexhepi, condemned the arrests and called the detainees "political prisoners." Posters of Mr. Mustafa, posing with children and smiling, are now all over Pristina.

Though the United Nations says the timing of the arrests is coincidental, coming after long investigations, many Albanians see it as a coordinated crackdown on the former KLA.

Large protests have followed each of the arrests, and they have become more violent. In Decani last month, a protest ended in clashes that left 52 civilians, 11 police officers and three peacekeeping soldiers injured.

"UNMIK is doing the work that Serbs did before," said Mr. Halitjaha, using the acronym for the U.N. Mission in Kosovo.

Even centrist Albanians complain that the Kosovo government and parliament, elected last year, have no power, their decisions subject to veto by U.N. officials.
The overwhelming majority of Albanians in Kosovo want independence, though the province is still nominally part of Serbia and Yugoslavia while it is temporarily administered by the United Nations.

Meanwhile, the government in Belgrade has been more actively cooperating with the U.N. mission since former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic fell from power in 2000. Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic, who is in charge of Kosovo, visits Pristina frequently.

Irish woman's grief for deported Kosovar fiancé

War refugee worked hard and paid his tax but was still turfed out

Henry McDonald, Ireland editor Sunday September 22, 2002 - Guardian Unlimited

Lynn Connolly and her Kosovar boyfriend were determined to show everyone they were marrying for love, not money.

Rather than rushing into a register office for a quick wedding, thus guaranteeing Xhemajl Namoni's future in Ireland, the couple decided to get engaged, to save up for a house and to get long-term employment.

But their decision has cost them dearly. Namoni, 24, was deported from Dublin a fortnight ago after living four years in Ireland, two of which he spent working and paying tax and insurance.

Lynn Connolly this weekend described their brush with Irish bureaucracy as a Kafkaesque tale of double-think and comic ineptitude.

Lynn first met Namoni in 1998, just after he fled Kosovo to escape the civil war between KLA separatists and Slobodan Milosevic's Serbian forces.

'We fell in love early on in the relationship, but we both decided we would not get married until we were sure. Besides, I didn't want to have people saying I was only marrying him for £3,000 or whatever was the going rate for bogus marriages.'

The couple moved in to a south Dublin apartment and, within two years, Namoni received a work permit. He eventually got a job as a supermarket packer in Clondalkin.

'He was never in trouble, he was paying his tax and insurance and had integrated. Some guys from Kosovo don't mix, but Xhemajl was different. He joined the football team at work and drank with the Irish lads he worked with once a week. Eventually he even started to get a bit of a Dublin accent as his English improved. Xhemajl's future was here in Ireland.'

Then the couple, who had just put a down-payment on a house in Athy, Co Kildare, were summoned to the Immigration Control Office in Dublin. They were told Namoni was to be deported because he was living in Ireland illegally. 'We were given a date, 15 August, for Xhemajl's deportation,' Lynn said. 'He was taken to Dublin Airport and put on a plane with three Garda officers. I thought: "That's it, I won't see him unless I go over to Kosovo." Later that day Xhemajl phoned from Germany and told me the Gardai were taking him back to Dublin.'

Because of the floods in Germany, Namoni's flights to Istanbul and eventually the Kosovan capital, Pristina were delayed.'I couldn't believe it, they were sending him back at the Irish taxpayer's expense to Dublin and then they would try to deport him again,' Lynn said.

Just over a week later, on 23 August, Namoni was eventually sent back via Germany and Turkey to Kosovo. Lynn was devastated. Her troubles were not over, however. 'It was about 7am, two days after Xhemajl was deported,' she said, 'There was a heavy knock on the door. When I opened it, there were five female police officers and two male officers, one of whom held up a Wanted-type poster with Xhemajl's picture on it. They started searching the house and asking where Namoni was, demanding to know where he was hiding.'

A spokesman for the Department of Justice in Dublin declined to comment on the deportation.

Valerie Hughes, a spokeswoman for the Kosovo Ireland Solidarity group, said the case highlighted some of the absurdities of asylum policy in Ireland.

'The government tells us we have a moral duty to vote Yes in the second Nice treaty because we owe it to the poorer nations in eastern Europe who want to join the EU.

'But the double standards here are that, while we have all this rhetoric, the reality is that poor eastern Europeans like Xhemajl are being expelled from this country.'

Explosion destroys car of Macedonian PM's bodyguard

SKOPJE, Sept 22 (AFP) - An explosion destroyed a car belonging to the chief bodyguard of outgoing Macedonian prime minister Ljubco Georgievski Sunday, police told AFP.

No one was injured when two explosive devices destroyed the car belonging to Vlatko Stefanovski, Georgievski's head of security, in the early hours of Sunday, damaging 24 other vehicles.

Police said they had not established any possible motive for the attack.

Georgievski's VMRO-DPMNE party was removed from power in September 15 general elections, won by a Social Democrat-led opposition coalition.

The poll went ahead peacefully despite security fears following a series of violent incidents blamed on ethnic Albanian extremist groups in the west of the country.

Macedonia last year was the scene of an uprising last year by ethnic Albanian extremists against the central government, which for seven months had threatened to spill over into a new Balkans war.

Government bodyguard's car destroyed in the blast

Skopje (dpa) - A jeep, owned by the chief of security for Macedonia's ruling VMRO-DPMNE party, was destroyed in a grenade attack early on Sunday, police said.
Two grenades were thrown at the jeep by unknown attackers but no injures were reported.

The VMRO-DPMNE won only 33 out of 120 sets in the country's recent parliamentary elecion, losing power to a wide opposition coalition led by social democrats (SDSM).
VMRO-DPMNE, led by Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski, was often reported to be connected with organized crime and corruption.

Explosion destroys jeep of prime minister's chief bodyguard

SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) _ An explosions rocked a residential area of the Macedonian capital early Sunday, destroying a car belonging to a bodyguard of the country's outgoing prime minister, police said.

Two hand grenades were hurled at around 2:40 a.m. (0040 GMT) at a jeep in Skopje's suburb of Aerodrom, wrecking the vehicle and damaging 24 others, police spokesman Voislav Zafirovski said.

He said the jeep belonged to Vlatko Stefanovski, a chief bodyguard of outgoing hard-line Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski.

No one was injured in the blast, Zafirovski said. He declined to comment on motives for the attack, saying only that an investigation was under way.

Last Tuesday, the government claimed that on Sept. 14, police foiled a plot by ethnic Albanian guerrillas to assassinate Interior Minister Ljube Boskovski in shootout in the village of Celopek west of the capital, Skopje.

The Interior Ministry said then that the clash on the day before the troubled Balkan country's first post-rebellion elections involved members of a renegade rebel group called the Albanian National Army. One of the gunmen was killed and two others were wounded, Interior Ministry spokesman Voislav Zafirovski said. He offered no other information to back up the claim.

Macedonia is still recovering from last year's six-month armed conflict between government forces and ethnic Albanian insurgents that ended with a Western-brokered peace deal.

The agreement gave the ethnic Albanian minority broader rights, including early elections, in exchange for peace. The minority accounts for a third of Macedonia's two million inhabitants.

In the Sept. 15 parliamentary elections, Georgievski's VMRO party was overwhelmingly defeated by the center-left alliance.

Social Democrats lose one seat in Macedonia count

Skopje (dpa) - The Social Democrat winners of last week's Macedonian elections lost a parliamentary seat Sunday after the central electoral commission decided to accept complaints from outgoing ruling party VMRO-DPMNE.

The Social-Democrat(SDSM) win was a close call, swung only by several hundred votes which put 34 of Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski's party deputies in parliament.

The SDSM led coalition, Together for Macedonia, took 59 seats in total, and the Democratic Integrative Union (BDI), led by rebel leader turned politician Ali Ahmeti, gained 16 seats.

The Democratic Party of Albanians (PDSH) won seven seats, and two smaller ethnic Albanian parties, the Party for Democratic Progress and the National Democratic Party (NDP) won two and one respectively.

The Socialist Party of Macedonia (SPM) also gained one seat in the assembly.
It is widely believed that SDSM will give three ministerial posts to coalition partners BDI, in a move supported by the international community.

The BDI recently released a wish-list, expressing a willingness to take one of three top ministries - defence, interior or foreign affairs.

According to party sources, SDSM will define its offer to BDI sometime next week, but the possibility of former rebels taking over one of the three top ministries was very unlikely.

Earlier on Sunday, a jeep, owned by the chief of Georgievski's security, was destroyed in a grenade attack, but no injures were reported.

The VMRO-DPMNE was often reported to be connected with organized crime and corruption.

No big change expected after Serbian presidential polls

By Boris Babic

Belgrade (dpa) - Serbian voters go to the polls next Sunday in a presidential election that is certain to finally oust the last few representatives of Slobodan Milosevic's regime.
Candidates, politicians and media are working hard to present the election to an apathetic public as crucial for Serbia's future, but the campaign seems to have highlighted the current power struggle in Belgrade rather than any past tensions.

The current president, Vojislav Kostunica, and the deputy prime minister, Miroljub Labus, have emerged as the most serious contenders among nearly a dozen candidates.
Although the two leaders appear to be poles apart, observers say that change is unlikely regardless of who is elected.

In an interview with the weekend edition of the Belgrade daily Danas, Kostunica came out in favour of a pro-European Serbia and good relations with the United States.

But at the same time, he did not try to hide his disgust when the West pressurised Belgrade into arresting suspected war criminals and has been against handing over suspects to the tribunal in The Hague.

``I believe it is time for us to take care of these trials,'' he told Danas. But Yugoslavia has yet to prove that it has done all it can to secure the United Nations trial of Bosnian Serb wartime leaders, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic.

During the campaign, playing on nationalist sentiments, Kostunica hit on a sore point with neighbouring Bosnia, when he said Serbs in Serbia and Bosnia were ``only temporarily separated''.
Bosnia is still recovering from a three-year war between its ethnic groups, and ethnic tensions continue to halt its economic recovery.

Kostunica has hurled allegations of corruption at Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic during his campaign, but the accusations always fell short of really moving justice into action.

Labus, on the other hand, never gave much weight to war criminals and borders, but he has taken credit for inking deals worth billions of dollars in loans for Serbia, rescheduled debts and described the upcoming vote as ``historic''.

Supported by Djindjic and his G17 Plus think tank, he made a flurry of accusations against Kostunica, most of them claiming that he was cowering behind the largely ceremonious presidential role and had avoided making a single decision over the past two years.

In an interview with Danas, Labus said he decided to run for the Serbian presidency because he felt reforms had hit a wall and lacked political support.
``This is one of those historical crossroads for Serbia in the 21st century ... whether it will enter the European Union or not,'' he said.

He also implied that Kostunica would block reforms, which started to stutter when Kostunica's and Djindjic's coalition began falling apart last year.

``The reason I entered the race ... was to reduce political risk and improve the climate for foreign investment,'' he said. ``I do not see that risk falling if somebody else gets elected. On the contary.''

However, the Serbian president has no real authority to either block or enhance reforms - that is up to the prime minister and his government, with the backing of the parliament.
The constitution allows him to call for another vote, but commits him to signing it if the parliament approves it the second time.

Despite the dramatic pledges recently made by some candidates to declare a state of emergency, dissolve parliament and call early elections the president only has the power to do this if it is backed by a government proposal.

So, be it Kostunica or Labus, Djindjic would keep the real power at least until the parliamentary elections, due by the end of 2004.

Three parties switch sides in Serbian Presidential race

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) _ Three small parties allied so far with Serbian Prime minister Zoran Djindjic have switched sides, possibly hurting the chances of his candidate in presidential elections in this dominant Yugoslav republic, a radio station reported Sunday.

The three minor parties decided to back Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica in his bid for the Serbian presidency in the Sept. 29 ballot, Belgrade's Radio B92 reported.

They hold 15 seats in 250-seat Serbian parliament and are part of a 17-member coalition that ousted former President Slobodan Milosevic two years ago. Djindjic's candidate for president is pro-western Yugoslav Deputy Prime Minister Miroljub Labus, who is trailing Kostunica slightly in pre-election polls.

Kostunica decided to run for Serbian president last month since the office of Yugoslav president will disappear as part of major constitutional changes reshaping Yugoslavia into a loose union of its two republics, Serbia and Montenegro.

Zoran Zivkovic, Yugoslavia's Interior Minister and a top Djindjic's ally dismissed the move of the former allies as ``insignificant.''

``They enjoy the support of less than one percent of voters, Labus is even stronger now, because those worthless (people) fell off,'' Zivkovic said.

But Milica Kuburovic, a Belgrade political analyst, said she believes the three parties' change of sides would be harmful for Labus.

``The very fact that members of the ruling coalition are refusing to support Djindjic's candidate is damaging for both Labus and the prime minister,'' Kuburovic said.

Italy's Giorgo Armani store opens in Belgrade

BELGRADE, Sept 22 (Reuters) - Italian fashion house Giorgo Armani opened its first shop in the Yugoslav capital of Belgrade, still wearing fresh scars from the 1999 NATO bombing.

The shop, located just off Belgrade's main shopping street, offers models from the Giorgio Armani collection, the Armani Collezioni and Armani Jeans lines.

Brand retailers have flocked to Belgrade in recent years as the country recovers from a decade of warfare and international isolaton.

``The offered models vary in price and I believe that many are affordable even to ordinary people with modest budgets,'' Ornella Sassi, the Armani Jeans area manager,told reporters at the opening of the shop late Saturday.

Zoran Djurdjevic, the owner of the shop, said he did not worry about sales despite the fact that the average monthly income stands at around $100.

He saw the nouveau rich, whose numbers mushroomed in the 1990s' during warfare and sanctions, and young entrepreneurs as an attractive customer base.

Armani said last week it plans to open 20-30 stores in China within five years

Albanians troops in action to rescue flood victims

TIRANA, Sept 22 (AFP) - Hundreds of troops were despatched to northern Albania Sunday to evacuate local inhabitants stranded by floods which have damaged hundreds of homes and submerged thousands of hectares (acres) of land, government officials reported.

A spokesman said troops had been deployed to Lezha and Shkoder regions, among the worst-hit areas following heavy rainfall.

Prime Minister Fatos Nano went personally to Shkoder, 120 kilometres (75 miles) north of the capital Tirana and ordered urgent measures to rescue endangered residents, spokesman Aldrin Dalipi reported.

Storms prevented helicopters deploying in the area, but police rescued four children who had climbed up a crane to escape floodwaters.

Government authorities were expected to declare a state of emergency in the affected areas.

Albania declares disaster as floods swamp towns

TIRANA, Sept 22 (Reuters) - Floods washed through northwest Albania on Sunday, inundating hundreds of homes and prompting the government to declare a natural disaster in four districts.

The army trucked tents and food towards the worst-hit areas around the towns of Lezhe, Shkoder, Diber and Kukes, home to several hundred thousand people, a government spokesman said.

It dispatched 300 commandos to reopen a key road as wind and rain grounded helicopters and hampered relief efforts.
Hospitals were on high alert but reported no casualties by nightfall. There were some dramatic escapes though -- soldiers saved three children who were playing in the cabin of a crane when it collapsed and marooned them in the middle of a river swollen by torrential rain.

Thousands of acres of farmland were swamped. The damage looked unlikely to rival the flood devastation across central Europe earlier in the summer, but will be an unwelcome blow for the tiny Adriatic country, already one of Europe's poorest.

Heavy rains cause flooding in northwestern Albania

TIRANA, Albania (AP) _ Heavy rains have flooded northwestern Albania, blocking roads, causing damage to farmland and prompting authorities to evacuate hundreds of people trapped in their homes, the government's press office reported Sunday.

The national road from Lac to Shkodra, 45 to 115 kilometers (28 to 70 miles) north of the capital Tirana, was blocked Sunday, creating long lines of cars. Several local roads were equally impassable.

The Interior Ministry appealed to people to stay away from flooded areas.
The foul weather also led to the cancellation of flights to and from Rinas international airport near Tirana.

Government spokesman Aldrin Dalipi said the Defense Ministry had sent 300 special commando forces for evacuation of people trapped by floodwaters in their homes. Authorities also provided food and tents.

Hundreds of families in the towns of Lac and Lezha north of Tirana were evacuated with the help of the national army. Lezha mayor Gjok Jaku said some of the families were sheltered in two public buildings.

The national power company KESH was scrambling to restore power supply in areas most affected by the inundations.

Northwestern Albania has been repeatedly affected by flooding in recent years because of a lack of flood-prevention structures.

Chancellor faces major battle to satisfy allies at home and abroad

Priorities are jobs and fixing rift with US

John Hooper in Berlin Monday September 23, 2002

The Guardian

Gerhard Schröder's predicted sliver of a majority in the tightest German election since the second world war would still give him a famous victory. But what no one, except perhaps the chancellor, knows is what he intends to do with power if he is returned.

Rarely can a modern European leader have fought a campaign that relied so much on personality and so little on programme. The SPD's manifesto was a compendium of attractive platitudes. Its banal slogan was "a modern chancellor for a modern country".

It was not surprising that he shied away from giving hostages to fortune. Four years ago, Mr Schröder pledged to reduce unemployment to 3.5 million - and as the figure soared to 4 million, it looked like costing him his job.

But on the very first day of his campaign last month, he did offer an undertaking that is likely to dominate German politics in the immediate future: he pledged that under his leadership Germany would not take part in any US-led war to unseat Saddam Hussein, even if, as he later made clear, the invasion had the UN's blessing.

For all the chancellor's talk of a new "German way" in diplomacy, it is hard to see any government in Europe keeping such a distance from the US for long. During the campaign, the American defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was asked about the chancellor's remarks and noted pointedly that there was an election campaign going on - a clear signal that Washington expects a u-turn after the vote.

But, if the early forecasts are correct, the pressures on Mr Schröder to stick to his word have been stepped up by the voters. His expected wafer-thin majority is entirely due to the sparkling performance of the Greens. And having swallowed their pacifist principles over Kosovo and then Afghanistan, the Greens will be in no mood to compromise on Iraq.

That would make it more difficult for a re-elected Mr Schröder to do the repair work that is needed on his relations with the US. American irritation over his no-war campaign pledge turned to intense anger last week when a Social Democratic minister, Herta Däubler-Gmelin, was quoted by a newspaper as comparing George Bush's tactics on Iraq with those of Hitler.

On Friday night it was revealed that Mr Schröder had written to the White House to express his regrets, but the signs from Washington were that he still had some serious apologising to do after polling day. The US national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said the incident had "poisoned" US-German relations.

A no less important task for him will be to come up with a credible policy on unemployment. Before the election, he delegated responsibility for this all-important issue to a government-appointed commission chaired by the Volkswagen personnel chief.
It reported back in the middle of August and the chancellor adopted its proposals in full. The commission recommended an increase in the amount the self-employed can earn before falling into the tax net, and a thorough reform of the government's unemployment offices to shift the emphasis from administering dole money to placing people in work. But its central recommendation was that the government provide soft loans to companies willing to give jobs to the unemployed.

Many economists doubt whether stimulating demand-side "pull" in this way will be enough to achieve the commission's stated aim of halving unemployment without a bit of supply-side "push". And yet, under pressure from the trade unions, Mr Schröder shied away from cutting into the nexus of generous benefits and high taxes that robs many of the unemployed of an incentive for taking low-paid jobs.

With only a tiny majority in the Bundestag, Mr Schröder would find it much more difficult to push through anything more radical.

This raises the biggest question of all hanging over the chancellor. He fought his campaign on more or less traditional social democracy. In the middle of the campaign, indeed, he bailed out the mobile phone company Mobilcom, in a move that horrified neo-liberal economists.

There are some signs that the wily chancellor has begun to see an advantage in contesting the global drift towards neo-liberalism and the associated reinforcement of US hegemony; that he may see himself as a standard-bearer for a defiantly European counter-movement that would have as its aim the defence of the welfare state and the pursuit of an independent line in foreign policy.

A consistent line of any sort would mark a radical change from his first four years in power, during which he veered from an early infatuation with the Clinton-Blair "third way" towards a more traditional leftwing stance. Between 1998 and 2001, the only apparent principle of the government seemed to be expediency.

But in the past 12 months or so, there has been an increasingly evident - and original - line discernible in the stances that he and his government have taken.

Even before he put American backs up by vowing to keep his troops out of Iraq, Mr Schröder was at loggerheads with the European commission because of his pleading on behalf of German industry. In his campaign speeches he scorned the notion that the "new economy" could replace the old, and insisted that from now all the key issues in German foreign policy would be settled in Berlin.
Mr Schröder's pitch to the voters may have been short on firm undertakings, but it did contain the essence of a novel political outlook that brings together a defiant corporatism and a cheeky nationalism in a way not seen in a major European country since the days of De Gaulle.

Schroeder declares victory

BERLIN, Germany --German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's ruling coalition has eked out a new parliamentary majority in German elections after a campaign overshadowed by a possible U.S.-Iraq war.

CNN Complete official results showed the Social Democrats and Greens combined won 47.1 percent of the vote to continue their coalition for another four years.
Conservatives led by Bavarian governor Edmund Stoiber and the pro-business Free Democrats had a total of 45.9 percent, The Associated Press reported.

Schroeder appeared before cheering supporters at Social Democratic Party (SPD) headquarters in Berlin early Monday morning following the country's closest national election since World War II.

The chancellor and his foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, told the jubilant crowd they would start coalition talks soon.

"We will lead the coalition negotiations," said Fischer, popular leader of the Greens, the junior partner in the ruling government with Schroeder's SPD.

"This will be a co-operation built on a common foundation. It will be fair," Schroeder said. "We have hard times in front of us and we're going to make it together."
Stoiber, Schroeder's conservative rival, predicted the chancellor's new mandate would not last a year.
Stoiber, who had prematurely declared victory after early returns Sunday night, said he would hold his opposition Christian Democrats together "so that we are capable of taking over the government, even if it is not possible at the present time."

"Within the year's term, I will take over and construct a new government," he said. In the meantime, he told supporters in Munich, "Germany has to win back its credibility."

"Perhaps there is a piece of universal justice there that Mr. Schroeder will be able to live through the results of what he has brought upon us. Just give him a few months to go through that," Stoiber said.

With 99.7 percent of the vote counted, Schroeder's coalition won a combined 47.1 percent of the vote, according to official results reported by The Associated Press.
Projections by all three television networks showed Schroeder's coalition holding onto a slim majority of seats in the Bundestag, or lower house of parliament.
Stoiber indirectly conceded victory when he spoke to party faithful in Bavaria shortly after midnight, admitting he may not be able to form a new government based on election results.

But the Bavarian leader predicted Schroeder's coalition would be too fragile to last a full four-year term.

"Should we not be able to construct a government ... the Schroeder government will only be able to govern for a very, very short time," Stoiber said.

"We're capable of taking over the government even if it's not possible immediately. In a year's time I will take over and construct a new government.

"Perhaps there is a piece of universal justice here," Stoiber said. "Perhaps he (Schroeder) will have to live through what he has brought us.

"With (Schroeder's) coalition, Germany won't return to economic health and it won't break out of the isolation from Europe and America that Schroeder drove it into."

Schroeder has drawn criticism from the Bush administration for opposing a possible U.S.-led war against Iraq, although the stance gained him support among German voters during the campaign.

Projections showed Schroeder with a majority of anywhere from 11 to 15 seats.
An RTL/Forsa projection for n-tv private television showed Schroeder's SPD with 38.6 percent, Stoiber's CDU-CSU with 38.3 percent, the Greens at 8.6 percent and the FDP -- the conservatives' traditional partners -- at 7.3 percent. That would give Schroeder's current SPD-Green coalition a 15-seat lead.

An Electoral Research Group projection for ZDF public television put the CDU-CSU and SPD in a tie at 38.5 percent, the Greens at 8.5 percent and the FDP at 7.4 percent. That would translate into an 11-seat majority for Schroeder.

A projection by Infratest Dimap for ARD public television put the CDU-CSU and SPD in a tie at 38.6 percent, the Greens at 8.6 percent and the FDP 7.4 percent. That would also give Schroeder an 11-seat majority.

Stoiber, speaking in Bavaria, repeated his claim earlier in the evening at party headquarters in Berlin that the CDU-CSU had won the election.

CNN's Chris Burns said Stoiber may have been referring to the fact that the CDU "put themselves back together" with the help of their sister party, the CSU, after the CDU "self-destructed" over a financial scandal.

"The CDU, the great party of the center, is back," Stoiber told a crowd of cheering supporters in Berlin. "It is the biggest party in parliament. We will make what we can of this great result."

But Schroeder told an audience at SPD headquarters: "Sometimes those who are happy early are disappointed later.

"We want to continue this administration, and it seems we will be able to. We have good prospects to continue," Schroeder said.

For the Greens and Fischer, it was their strongest showing in the party's 22-year history.
When asked if the Greens would set a high price for co-operation, Fischer said: "We know many people wanted this constellation. We had a good result. We have to be modest in victory."

But for the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), all three projections showed the former East German Communist Party with about 4 percent of the vote -- not enough to cross the 5 percent threshold to gain a place in parliament.

Polls opened on Sunday with rain and heavy clouds over much of the country and closed at 6 p.m.

Stoiber was the first of the chancellor candidates to vote, arriving in blazer and red-and-white striped tie and accompanied by his wife in his hometown Wolfratshausen, south of Munich.

Schroeder arrived some hours later at a polling booth in Hanover, also with his wife.
Schroeder used his last campaign rally on Saturday to reinforce his opposition to a U.S. war in Iraq, which has dominated campaigning in the run-up to the polls.

Alleged comments by his justice minister likening U.S. President George W. Bush's stance on Iraq to Hitler's use of foreign policy to hide domestic woes overshadowed the final day of campaigning and prompted Schroeder to write a conciliatory letter to Bush.
Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin has denied a report by the mass circulation newspaper Bild Zeitung that she plans to resign after polls close, under growing pressure from Schroeder's Social Democratic Party.

"No of course not," Daeubler-Gmelin told The Associated Press on Sunday after voting in the southern city of Tuebingen.
"Those are just malicious rumors meant to create uncertainty among voters."
Government spokesman Uwe-Karsten Heye, however, has not explicitly denied the report, but did dismiss it as speculation.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder - Germany's comeback kid

By Douglas Sutton

Hamburg (dpa) - Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder became Germany's version of the ``comeback kid'' - the nickname once given to former U.S. President Bill Clinton - on Sunday when his Social Democrat-Greens coalition appeared to be heading for a narrow re-election win.

Not too many weeks ago, few people would have been prepared to bet a single euro-cent on Schroeder, given the poor state of the German economy and the uncomfortably high unemployment.

But Schroeder used his considerable media-savvy skills in the final weeks to come from behind in the opinion polls and convince voters that he is the man better equipped than his conservative challenger, Edmund Stoiber, to manage the country's problems.
But only barely. With the computer projections showing the SPD-Greens returning to power by the narrowest of margins, Schroeder has had to absorb some bruises in seeing his party drop 3 percentage points to around 38 per cent.

Now it is time for the political scientists to analyse what did the trick for Schroeder. But one thing had become clear in the final weeks of the campaign: he pointedly dumped centrist positions and went back to his leftist-populist roots on economic and peace issues.
It's a far cry from 1998 when he defeated conservative Chancellor Helmut Kohl by seizing the political centre or ``Neue Mitte'' as it was called.

Back then Schroeder styled himself a pro-industry mover-and-shaker, posing for photos, chomping fat Cuban cigars and making sure everyone knew he was a member Volkswagen AG's supervisory board.

``Jobs, jobs, jobs,'' was Schroeder's top theme back then, and he told voters that if his government failed to get unemployment below 3.5 million by the next election they should toss him out of office.

By Election Day Sunday, he had fallen far short of that promise -as Stoiber never tired of pointing out during the campaign - with unemployment of over four million for a rate of almost 10 per cent.

German economic growth was a sickly 0.6 per cent in 2001 and Deutsche Bank has downgraded projections for this year to a grim 0.3 per cent. Retail sales are weak as shoppers strike against the euro which is widely regarded as having raised prices.
In the late-campaign image revamping, Schroeder dropped the big cigars and instead went on the attack against big business in a manner dear to the left-leaning wing of his SPD.
Bashing German chief executives won him applause at election rallies, and he scored big when he slammed what he said were multi-million euro bonus payments for CEOs who fire thousands of workers.

Tossing tidbits to the anti-American minority on Germany's left, Schroeder vowed he would never allow U.S.-style hire-and-fire and, for good measure, says he doubted whether the entire U.S. economic model should be followed by Germany.
Schroeder has also stood up to Washington and made rejection of war with Iraq a central plank of his reelection bid.

He vowed not to send troops for any war on Baghdad and refused to say if he would allow the U.S. to use its bases in Germany and overfly rights in an Iraq war. This position mirrored Schroeder's opposition to the 1991 Gulf War as premier of Lower Saxony state.
The approach worked. The news weekly Der Spiegel said just before the election: ``Schroeder's clear position, skilfully mixed with anti-American sentiments, is drawing leftists, nationalist rightists and especially people in (former communist East Germany).''
Despite his current anti-war stance, Schroeder became the first German leader in the post-war era to order troops into combat during the 1999 Kosovo war. He also approved sending several thousand mainly non-combat troops to Afghanistan as well as peacekeepers to Kabul.

Schroeder won approval for a tax cuts package which, while modest by most standards, was still Germany's biggest post-war tax reform. Both income and corporate taxes are being cut.

Offsetting this move, the government raised taxes on petrol and energy in a bid to get people to drive less and thus cut pollution.

Schroeder pushed through a historic new citizenship law which got rid of legislation from the Kaiser's era defining citizenship by bloodlines. The new law makes it easier for foreigners living in the country to get a German passport.

Trained as a lawyer, Schroeder had his own practice and was Lower Saxony premier from 1990 to 1998. He served in the German federal parliament - then in Bonn - from 1980 to 1986.

Growing up in post-war poverty with his widowed mother and four siblings, Schroeder never knew his father who was killed in 1944 while serving with the Nazi German army in Romania.

His mother - with whom he remains very close - worked as a cleaning lady for 40 years and Schroeder's childhood memories include stealing food to help feed the family and evading debt collectors.

One biography describes Schroeder as a rags to riches story and the chancellor stresses he has never forgotten his roots. His favourite song is Elvis Presley's ``In the Ghetto''.

Fischer cult could keep Schroeder chancellor

By Philip Blenkinsop

BERLIN, Sept 22 (Reuters) - Joschka Fischer confirmed his status as Germany's most popular politician on Sunday as he led his Greens to their best election result and looked set to keep his beloved job as foreign minister under Gerhard Schroeder.

At the start of the year, the Greens, junior partners to Chancellor Schroeder's Social Democrats, were facing the prospect of an exit from the national stage as opinion polls put them under the five percent needed to enter parliament.

However, they pulled off the biggest surprise of Sunday's election with a projected vote just shy of nine percent, their best performance since they first entered parliament in 1983 and far exceeding the 6.7 percent they won in 1998.

``We conducted a 'Red-Green' campaign and want to continue that. We want to have four more successful years of social and ecological policies with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder,'' a hoarse Fischer told a crowd of cheering party supporters in Berlin.

Fischer took much of the credit for the gains, reinforced by a focus on environmental issues after record floods swept Germany in August and fear of a looming war with Iraq that evidently mobilised core backers of a party with pacifist roots.

Fischer, who consistently scores above 80 percent in personal popularity ratings, led an almost single-handed crusade to revive the party's fortunes on a gruelling 17,000 km (10,500 mile) tour, playing to packed houses.

Formed in 1980 as a loose coalition of pacifists, socialists environmentalists and feminists, the Greens have sat uneasily in government. As the most democratic of Germany's five main parties, they have two leaders -- one male, one female -- and a history of divisive meetings, long-winded debate and only fragile consensus.

WAR AND PEACE
Some may have cringed at the focus of their campaign on the single figure of Fischer, but, just as they have had to put pragmatism before ideology in government, so they opted to focus their election posters on the foreign minister.

The floods that devastated parts of Germany in August and the recent Earth Summit in Johannesburg have brought a renewed focus on climate change, but pollsters say green issues excited few voters. Fischer, it seems, was the key.

The minister has fought a long fight to soften the Greens' anti-war and anti-nuclear stances and teach them to compromise in their 1998 switch from voice of protest to partner in government.
But Schroeder's strong opposition to any war against Iraq gave Fischer a chance to build bridges with the some of the die-hard ``fundamentalists'' who have felt alienated by his pragmatic compromises.

Indeed, at a Greens conference in 1999, Fischer was taunted with cries of ``murderer'' and ``warmonger'' for his backing of the NATO-led war over Kosovo, and was struck by a paint bomb that punctured his ear drum.

Fischer has revelled in his position of foreign minister, carving out a role for himself as a respected mediator in the Middle East and winning plaudits for his ideas about the future direction and structure of the European Union.

Four years into government, the Greens have campaigned on a manifesto that critics say is short of firm ecological pledges.

But the party claims the credit for many of the notable reforms of the SPD-Greens government, including a phase-out of nuclear power, the legalisation of gay marriages and an overhaul of Germany's archaic blood-based citizenship reform.

If projections are confirmed and the ``Red-Green'' government wins a second term, the revitalised Greens will be in a strong position to press the SPD to bend to their demands, the most controversial likely to be a new rise to fuel taxes in 2003.

Gerhard Schroeder, a study in contradictions

By Deborah Cole

BERLIN, Sept 22 (AFP) - A media-savvy leader with razor-sharp political instincts, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has frequently outfoxed opponents who have counted him out -- but this election will test his famous luck to the limit.

The razor's edge result of the Sunday national election may make the 58-year-old Schroeder the first chancellor in postwar history to be voted out of office after just one term.

In a heated campaign dominated by concerns over weak German economic growth and fears of war in Iraq, Schroeder banked on his sizeable advantage in personal popularity over his conservative challenger Edmund Stoiber to bring voters back to the fold.
As with most charismatic figures, Schroeder is a study in contradictions.

Blessed with natural confidence and easy charm, he can nevertheless seem thin-skinned and erratic, jumping from policy to policy until he wins approval.

Alternately "the bosses' comrade" and a champion of the left-wing, opportunism has often appeared to direct his political rudder and make him seem locked in a marriage of convenience with his party, the Social Democrats (SPD).

Schroeder is a product of the working class, brought up with five other children by his war-widow mother after his father died on the front in Romania.

"We really didn't have a cent," Schroeder recalls of his early years. "That is something that marks you for life."

Schroeder entered politics early, joining the SPD at 19. While working in a department store, he attended night classes that earned him his high school diploma at the age of 22, then qualified as a lawyer.

He became premier of the state of Lower Saxony on his second try in 1990, dislodging the regional Christian Democratic Union of then-chancellor Helmut Kohl.

Schroeder married his fourth wife, journalist Doris Koepf, 20 years his junior, in October 1997, less than a month after a messy, very public divorce.

His campaign in 1998 sent a gust of fresh air through Germany, promising a much-needed impulse for the reform of a bloated bureaucracy and an end to the malaise that marked the twilight of Kohl's 16-year rule.

Schroeder became Germany's seventh postwar chancellor -- the first man with no memory of World War II to rule the republic -- and entered office in a coalition with the Green party, and armed with a mandate for change and economic reform.

But he soon rediscovered his socialist roots with a widely criticized, and unsuccessful, bail-out of the Holzmann construction company, an attempt to save thousands of jobs that he repeated as telecommunications company Mobilcom faltered with just days to go in the election.

Although a foreign policy novice, he proved surer on the international stage.
He became the first postwar leader to back Germany's economic muscle with military might by participating in the NATO bombing campaign over the Yugoslav province of Kosovo in 1999.

After the anti-US terrorist assault of September 11, Schroeder declared "unlimited solidarity" with Germany's NATO partner, and laid his government on the line with a confidence vote before parliament that linked its survival to German military participation in Afghanistan.

The narrow victory solidified his power. But the economic downturn that followed ensured he would break his 1998 promise to drive unemployment below 3.5 million from more than four million and appeared to seal his political fate.
Yet with just days to go, Germany's comeback kid won a turnaround in the polls with his hands-on handling of a devastating floods crisis and his firm opposition to a war in Iraq, and the SPD pulled ahead of the conservatives in surveys.

It was still unclear late Sunday whether the momentum he gathered would propel him back to office.

Schroeder: Political gambler who led Germany into 21st century

By TONY CZUCZKA

BERLIN (AP) _ Gerhard Schroeder led Germany through four years of bold changes, returning the nation's seat of government to Berlin and becoming the first chancellor since World War II to send German troops into combat when NATO went to war against Yugoslavia.

Schroeder, 58, ran his campaign using the gruff charm that connects with ordinary Germans and a talent for political gambles that carried the Social Democrat through repeated rough spots with internal rivals and his junior coalition partner, the Greens party.

Schroeder's 1998 election victory marked a sea change in German politics, breaking a lethargy after 16 years of conservative rule by Helmut Kohl and lifting to power a generation rooted in Germany's student movement of the early 1970s.

But his start was chaotic: While power struggles rocked his Cabinet, pictures showed Schroeder _ a man of working-class origin who likes the good life _ puffing on Cuban cigars and posing in designer clothes.

The flap faded, but image and style remain so critical to Schroeder that he went to court during this year's election campaign to quash allegations that he dyes his mane of dark hair.

At work in the imposing new Berlin chancellery and on the international stage, Schroeder has pushed Germany to become more self-confident and take on greater responsibilities.
The first postwar chancellor to govern from reunited Berlin and the first with no personal memory of World War II, Schroeder broke new ground just months after coming to power when he sent the German military into combat in the 1999 war over Kosovo.

He put his job on the line last year by calling a confidence vote to bring doubters in his coalition behind the dispatch of German troops to Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks. Schroeder won and the soldiers went.

On the home front, he has pushed through landmark projects of the left _ new citizenship rules that allow quicker naturalization of foreigners, a phaseout of nuclear power and a gay marriage law.

But Schroeder, reputed as a industry-friendly Social Democrat, has disappointed business leaders who say he has shied away from market reforms Germany needs to spark growth and competitiveness.

A major tax cut took effect last year, but Schroeder also repeatedly hewed to the left on economic policy to satisfy a crucial constituency _ Germany's powerful labor unions.

Schroeder's once-turbulent private life has settled down since he took office. His fourth wife Doris Schroeder-Koepf, a journalist 20 years his junior, has been elegant at his side but in keeping with German tradition has generally stayed out of politics.

Born April 7, 1944 in the rural Lower Saxon town of Mossenberg, Schroeder was raised with five siblings by his mother in the tough postwar years. He never knew his father, a worker who was killed a few days after his son's birth while fighting for Hitler's army in Romania.

Schroeder worked as a farmhand and in a hardware store, finished high school while holding down jobs and became an attorney in the 1970s. He won a seat in the West German parliament in the 1980s and served eight years as governor of Lower Saxony until becoming chancellor in 1998.
NATO role in terror war

U.S. to press alliance for rapid reaction force

By Elaine Sciolino (The New York Times)

Thursday, September 19, 2002
PARIS: The United States will press NATO to create a permanent rapid reaction force to help improve the alliance's combat readiness in the face of terrorist threats, according to senior U.S. and European officials.
The proposal is expected to be presented by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at an informal meeting of the 19 NATO defense ministers in Warsaw next week, the officials said. The goal of the consultations there is to win formal approval at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit meeting in Prague in November.
The initiative comes at a time when NATO is in the middle of an identity crisis, uncertain of its role, its future and even who its members will be. It also coincides with a redefinition by the United States, which spends more than twice as much on defense as the other 18 members combined, of what constitutes a military threat in the post-Sept. 11 era.
A senior Pentagon official said that the NATO rapid reaction force would be separate from the European Union's 60,000-member rapid reaction force, which is to be operational next year. The European force would be focused "on the low end of peacekeeping," while the NATO force would have to be involved in "high intensity" conflict, he said.
Foreign diplomats and military officers at NATO complained that the proposal was vague and the timing suspect. Senior diplomats said they had not been briefed in any detail by the Americans about the proposal.
"We are waiting to see what kind of military requirements are involved," an ambassador to NATO said. "What will be the cost? What will be its mission? Its command arrangements? NATO is in the middle of expanding. Will this add to its burden and complicate the issue?"
The ambassador noted that the goal of the summit meeting had repeatedly changed because of the Bush administration. "First it was enlargement, then it was all about capabilities, now it's all about a reaction force," he said.
U.S. proponents of the new force said it would consist of troops already part of standing armies and would work with the United States.
It would function in small and highly mobile units under a new command to carry out combat missions on short notice outside Europe.
"Can we develop in NATO a force that would be capable of rapid deployment, that would have the ability to respond to a crisis and be able to integrate with U.S. forces and have the technical capabilities necessary to do that?" asked General George Joulwan, a former NATO commander, who has written and spoken extensively on the issue. "What I gather Rumsfeld will put on the table is a way to do that."
Rumsfeld, a former ambassador to NATO, has made no secret of his skepticism about whether NATO has much of a military role to play.
Asked by telephone from Washington about Rumsfeld's mission, Victoria Clarke, the Pentagon spokeswoman, said: "The secretary is going to have a lot of discussions. He's just not keen on us previewing his conversations."
For some time, Bush administration officials have broadly criticized NATO for its shortcomings. The administration wants to change the military structure of NATO so that it can react better and faster to the emerging global threats.
Senior administration officials denied that the U.S. initiative had been aimed at garnering support from America's NATO allies for a military offensive against Iraq.
One pointed out that NATO was already creating a high-readiness force involving tens of thousands of troops that would be operational by the end of the year. But the administration's decision to push the issue now dovetails with its campaign against terror and its war planning against Iraq.

Seven new countries to be invited to NATO

SOFIA, Sept 22 (AFP) - Seven countries will be invited to join NATO at its Prague summit in November, Bruce Jackson, president of the non-governmental United States committee for NATO, said here Sunday.

"We believe that the three Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria will be qualified for invitation at the Prague summit," he said.

In an interview with Bulgarian radio, the US ambassador to Sofia James Pardew said Jackson had expressed "a personal opinion which does not come from the administration" of the United States.

Two other countries, Macedonia and Albania, also hope to join NATO.

As part of a conference of experts on security in southeastern Europe, Jackson said that new memberships would be ratified in the United States in November 2003, and in all North Atlantic Treaty Organisation countries around March 2004.

"The first summit where Bulgaria will sit as a full member will be May 2004," he said outside the conference.

Jackson believed US President George Bush would not publicly announce his country's position on new NATO members before the Prague summit, to take place November 21 and 22.

"They will consult between them but I think they will announce their decision together, in Prague," he said of the existing 19 NATO members.

Congress Wants to Know Cost of War

Dissatisfied With Pentagon Figures, Lawmakers Ask CBO for Estimates

By Mike Allen and Jonathan Weisman - Washington Post

Bush administration officials told Congress last week that a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq would cost as little as $40 billion, but skeptical Democratic leaders asked Capitol Hill's nonpartisan budget office for a second opinion.

Lawmakers from both parties have grown increasingly frustrated by what they see as the White House's refusal to confront the financial cost of a new front in the war on terrorism. Price tags have ranged from the Pentagon's $40 billion to as much as $200 billion. Officials have even floated the idea that reconstruction costs would be covered by the sale of Iraqi oil.

But military experts and congressional staff say none of those estimates appears to be based on rigorous analysis. "It goes back to the entire philosophy that if you go to war, you worry about the bills later," said James W. Dyer, Republican staff director of the House Appropriations Committee.

President Bill Clinton's Office of Management and Budget drafted detailed funding requests for $5.8 billion just after NATO's 1999 attack on Yugoslavia, and included estimates not only for the cost of fighting to expel Yugoslav forces from Kosovo but also to rebuild the Serbian province.

The administration has kept estimates vague and upbeat. Pentagon officials have told Congress the cost could be $50 billion to $100 billion. But defense officials also said it could be as little as half the $61 billion cost of the Persian Gulf War of 1991, or $40 billion in current dollars. That suggests to Democrats that the administration may be low-balling the cost to build support for an enterprise that could involve long occupation and rebuilding, which is not considered in the Pentagon figures.

"They need to be a lot more open about what the downside risks might be," said Scott Lilly, the House Appropriations Committee's Democratic staff director.

Looking for what they say will be a more objective analysis, Democrats on the House and Senate Budget committees asked the Congressional Budget Office on Friday to draft estimates for multiple fighting scenarios and durations.

"The estimate should be constructed and displayed in full recognition of the many significant uncertainties that currently exist regarding how a military campaign against Iraq might unfold, and what stabilization and reconstruction might entail," wrote Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (D-S.C.), ranking member of the House Budget Committee, and Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.

Democrats portrayed the move as nonadversarial. "Congress is committed to providing all the resources needed to safeguard America's national security," said Thomas S. Kahn, Democratic staff director of the House Budget Committee. "We need a CBO estimate because the cost of war means we may have to reconsider other budget priorities."

The White House says President Bush has made no decision about Iraq. Privately, officials say realistic estimates are elusive because the size of the force has not been determined and they are unsure how much other nations would pay. Allies paid for all but about $7.5 billion of the Gulf War, but officials expect the United States would have to shoulder much more of the cost of a second confrontation.

The Gulf War deployment included about 500,000 troops. The Pentagon is telling lawmakers an Iraqi invasion would require about 250,000 troops, with Britain supplying as many as 30,000. Pentagon planners also are developing what they are calling a "light option" of 70,000 to 80,000 troops.

Administration officials have been trying to reassure lawmakers, voters and other governments about the cost of deposing Saddam Hussein. Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill told the Chamber of Commerce in Portland, Maine, last week: "Whatever it is that's finally decided to be done, we will succeed and we can afford it."

Similarly, OMB Director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. said any decision by Bush could be managed, in part by "rotating resources from things that are of less than life and death importance to meet the life and death imperatives of the moment."

Providing what some of his colleagues consider a pessimistic estimate, White House economic adviser Lawrence B. Lindsey told the Wall Street Journal in an interview last week that an "upper bound" cost of a war would be between 1 and 2 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product. That translates to $100 billion to $200 billion.

Jacob "Jack" Lew, who drafted the Kosovo budget as Clinton's budget director, said that getting the number right is important for the debate ahead. "If it's too low, it raises the question of whether you're willing to stick it out," he said. "If it's too high, you raise the bar too high for getting into the conflict."

But many members of both parties are questioning whether the potential cost of attacking Iraq would make much difference in lawmakers' decisions, because Democrats have become increasingly supportive of Bush's Iraq policy. Indeed, lawmakers fear there could be a political backlash from even asking about cost. "We're all just scared to death of this issue," a Democratic aide said.

To a handful of Democrats, such fears are infuriating. Nineteen House Democrats announced their opposition to war in Iraq on Thursday, and Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) promised that "dozens more" will follow. "My constituents are being told this country cannot afford the cost of prescription drugs for seniors," Kucinich said. "People are bound to begin asking why can we afford this war."
Most experts say a detailed cost estimate is next to impossible now, and estimates on previous conflicts have always been wrong. The Clinton administration's Kosovo estimate was ultimately swallowed by the cost of one military debacle: the failed effort to introduce Apache attack helicopters to the conflict. Even the war in Afghanistan was expected to include a long, hard winter fight and a major spring offensive against al Qaeda, said Andrew F. Krepinevich, executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Pentagon and Capitol Hill analysts have concluded that some costs of the new confrontation with Iraq would be higher than in 1991. The military would undoubtedly use more expensive precision-guided munitions, for instance, and the duration of the land war would be longer. Troop salaries and National Guard and Army Reserve call-up costs would also be higher.

Scott R. Feil, co-director of the Association of the U.S. Army's Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month that keeping the peace after overthrowing Hussein would take 75,000 U.S. troops and $16.2 billion a year. But actual rebuilding could be a wash, because reconstruction could be funded by selling Iraqi oil, congressional and independent experts said.

Playing Into Evil's Hands

The U.N. is worse than irrelevant. It has enabled brutality--even genocide.

By JOSEPH A. BOSCO (Washington Times)

Joseph A. Bosco teaches a graduate seminar on international law and morality at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.

September 22 2002

Critics accuse President Bush of undue harshness in condemning the United Nations to "irrelevance" if it fails to heed Washington's call for decisive action against Iraq. Actually, the president pulled his punches. A less charitable and more accurate assessment of the world body would note its relevant--but harmful--role as enabler and facilitator of aggression, humanitarian catastrophes, even genocide.

Far from fulfilling its mandate to enforce international peace and security, the U.N. has often served instead to allow governments to hide their own passivity behind the protective cover of international action--or more likely, inaction.

For their part, lawless dictators such as Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein have found the U.N. quite useful as they went about their brutal business.

After it launched its war against Bosnia's Muslims in 1991, Yugoslavia raced to the U.N. Security Council and received permission as a nonmember to introduce a resolution the council dutifully adopted, imposing an arms embargo on the nation--the only time a state has requested sanctions against itself.

The result was to freeze the Serbs' weapons monopoly and to deprive Bosnia of the means to defend itself--a right guaranteed under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter. That preemptive diplomatic strike by Belgrade proved highly successful and set the pattern for U.N. fecklessness and complicity during the next 3 1/2 years and in more than 100 ineffective Security Council resolutions. The council statements were always couched in stark moral terms and suggested stern action. But the torture, mass rapes and massacres continued as the world looked on.

Worse than futile rhetoric, the Security Council took additional actions that served to enhance Milosevic's ability, through the likes of Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, to carry out evil schemes. It established six Bosnian "safe zones" where besieged Muslim men, women and children could gather under the protection of U.N. "peacekeepers." This inadvertently concentrated the targets for Serbian bombers and snipers. The ultimate shame of the U.N. was Srebrenica, a safe zone, where lightly armed (and morally disarmed) peacekeepers stood by helplessly as Serb forces rounded up busloads of men destined for certain execution.

On other occasions, Serbs boldly seized hundreds of blue-helmeted U.N. soldiers as hostages, using some as human shields against Western air attacks. By the time the United States had seen enough of U.N. peacekeeping and pushed for the use of force against the Serbs, more than 200,000 Bosnian Muslims had died and 2 million had been made refugees.

Similar U.N. paralysis characterized the response to Serb atrocities in Kosovo. That time, after a year's delay, the U.S. led a NATO operation that bypassed the Security Council, avoiding certain Russian and Chinese vetoes. And in Rwanda, where minimal intervention could have prevented the slaughter of a million Tutsis, the Security Council, with Washington's shameful collaboration, strove successfully not to get involved.

The situation with Iraq shows again how counterproductive it can be when the U.N. asserts legal authority over a situation: It can provide the excuse for states to shirk their own responsibilities even when the U.N. falters.

The invasion of Kuwait provided a clear case of international aggression, and vigorous American leadership pushed the organization to carry out its mandate. But since then, the Security Council has been all too willing to look the other way as Baghdad flouted its resolutions.

While Secretary-General Kofi Annan finds his Iraq diplomacy more effective when backed by a credible threat of force, he has won only Hussein's false promises. Now he has withdrawn from further "negotiations," which Washington opposes, after helping Iraq draft yet another empty letter.

President Bush has said he will not allow U.N. diplomacy to subvert the U.N.'s mission. Failure to enforce Security Council resolutions does more than make the organization irrelevant; it makes it complicit in Iraq's dangerous violations of international law and its escalating threat to international peace and security.